I’m waiting for Rob Lowe at the Polo Lounge, Beverley Hills Hotel. I’m sat in his favourite table, corner banquette outside. The best spot “for people watching”. When he arrives, the staff perform bowing rituals as if he is royalty. As indeed he is – Hollywood royalty, having started off in the 1983 era defining Francis Ford Coppola film The Outsiders and proceeding to become a high-octane member of the Brat Pack with Robert Downey Jr, Sean and Chris Penn, Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen after his role in St Elmo’s Fire.

After a decade of excess (of everything – alcohol, sex) he found his niche proper as Press Secretary Sam Seaborn in The West Wing.

There’s been a profusion of TV series including Code Black and the much loved Parks and Rec, a Globe nomination for his The Grinder and for his role as Dr Jack Startz (creepy cosmetic surgeon) in Beyond The Candalabra and a whole new career as an author. His memoirs Stories I Only Tell My Friends and Love Life are both wonderful reads (both NY Times Best Sellers) with just the right amount of fun, self-deprecation and revelation.

In the flesh he is so handsome you gasp – perfect, chiselled, jaw droppingly handsome. His skin is firm and tan, his slinky body ripples under his dark blue T shirt. His eyes are cornflower blue. Not surprisingly he’s got a skincare range called Profile. Who wouldn’t want to have his skin?

“I’m so hungry,” he announces as soon as he sits down. While you might assume Rob Lowe’s hungry would be for a piece of steamed fish, it’s a burger he’s craving with fries and we share a Macarthy salad to start. It’s an enormous chopped salad involving very bad things.

He’s about to leave for London where on December 1 he will perform his one man show Stories I Only Tell My Friends. He says he’s written it instead of a third book. He’s also going to be filming Wild Bill, a crime drama for ITV set in the Midlands.

When the chunky salad comes it seems as if he’s hungry on another level, an emotional one. Is that a tear glistening in his eye?

He tells me his three-year old dog, Jack a German short haired pointer has just died. He’s in town for meetings. His home is in Santa Barbra and everything happened so quickly he couldn’t get back to say goodbye. “By yesterday he was blind and having seizures. They think he was poisoned. I saw him eating mushrooms in the yard… I pulled him off but I must have been too late… He was such a f****** good boy. I’ll show you a picture of him.”

He shows me the dog – sensitive eyed, brown and white speckled. Lowe loves his dogs. He has another, a Jack Russell called David. He took David to see an animal communicator.

“She would give voice to the animal such as ‘David wants you to know he’s working very hard and he doesn’t feel he’s appreciated.’ David is 17 and every time I go away I think somethings going to happen to him…but it was this guy. He was so happy and I’ve never had a dog that would play fetch with me all day long. David doesn’t do fetch but David was a surf professional. He would surf with his own life preserver on and a dog board but he gave it up.”

Would Lowe ever give up surfing? “Hell no. I’m into it more than ever.” Lowe is into many things. He’s the ultimate multi tasker. Acting, writing, surfing. There’s an energy from him that’s nothing to do with his high caffeine consumption. It’s an inner drive. It’s electric. It’s palpable. He’s used to turning things around. There have been quite a few life changing choices that have gone on for Lowe but more of that later.

“You know all dogs go to heaven.”

My sunglasses fall off my head because the arms are too wide. He tries to fix them. He’s got such elegant hands, long fingers, pink nail beds, an intricate wedding ring and a wizardy looking gold ring with a diamond triangle, both made by his wife Sheryl (nee Berkoff), the jewellery designer who sells at Bergdorfs and Niemans. High end stuff for high end people.

Does the wizardy one have magic powers?

“In a way. It’s the sign for being in recovery.” I’ve never seen anyone with a recovery style ring as beautiful as this one but I’ve never really seen anyone that’s been in recovery for 20 years. He’s passionate about being in recovery. He said if he’d been on the booze he wouldn’t have achieved anything and right now his days are very full.

“This is a very famous salad you know. It feels very Jackie Collins in the best possible way.” Indeed, it was her favourite salad. “I made it into one of her books once. It was a career highlight. It read ‘he walked into the room and he looked like Rob Lowe.’” I tell him no one looks like Rob Lowe. “You’re nice to say it,” and he smiles, happy to have a compliment and I’m happy that he’s not one of these people who say, ‘no, no, surely not.’

The waitress delivers a candle even though it’s daylight to help the flies go away. They noticed from afar that the flies were bothering him. “Flies love me. I hate flies. My wife hates flies. Sheryl Lowe loses it over flies. Once we were in Hawaii. It’s a beautiful day and she says, ‘these flies have red faces.’ There’s nobody more quotable than Sheryl Lowe. I’ve had more people offer to make a reality series out of her than…”

Wait a minute. I thought you already did a reality series with your boys (Matthew 25 and John Owen 23). “Both smart, cool guys. The Lowe Files was us on the road exploring supernatural legends. A very different kind of reality. I loved it and I’m proud of it but if we had the traditional cameras following us everywhere it would be the biggest thing because my family is so nuts…My wife is such an original. Her business is growing faster than she can keep up with. It’s very inspiring to watch but not surprising. One of the reasons I fell in love with her when I was dating everybody under the sun was that she had her own business, her own work life, a tremendous work ethic and she was so driven. And that really comes through in everything she’s accomplished which is awesome.”

There was a time when Rob Lowe really was dating everybody who was A lister ready. And why not? He was young and gorgeous and available. He dated Natasha Kinski, Demi Moore, Princess Stephanie and Melissa Gilbert and admitted to using MTV like a home shopping network. If he saw a sexy dancer on the latest Sting video he would get her number.

The opening chapter of his book Stories I Only Tell My Friends is about how he lived in awe of John Kennedy Junior – his heritage, the fact that all of his girlfriends loved him and when John Kennedy Jr saw that Lowe was married to Sheryl and expressed surprise ‘How did you settle down?’ and Lowe recommended that the gorgeous blonde now chatting with his wife was one that Kennedy should not let go, soon after Kennedy married Caroline. Just after he put Lowe on the cover of his magazine George he was killed in the plane crash.

But how did Lowe do it? How did the most handsome man in the world make monogamy interesting?

“When it came down to it, what kind of woman do you want? There were the Princess Stephanie’s who sleep till 5.00pm, wake up, dinner, no less than 15 people a night, a club, repeat, repeat, repeat. Or there’s the Sheryl Lowe’s who come from nothing and own their own house by the time they are 20.”

We realise he’s missing a pickle and the pickle arrives immediately. Not sure he’ll get this kind of service in the Midlands where he goes to shoot Wild Bill.

“I play an American law enforcement analyst whose father was a cop who never wanted to be ground down by the system. He went to Stanford, got his degree in algorithms and still ended up in law enforcement. He has a 13-year old daughter who’s struggling since her mom has died. He’s been headhunted by the police force in Boston UK to come and take care of the largest crime rate per capita in the UK.”

We’re not sure if the crime rate statistic is fact or fiction but in 2018 the Lincolnshire area crime rate was higher than average and in 2016 it was the highest in the UK.

“It’s a classic fish out of water – cosmopolitan American comes to the Midlands. It’s a different case each week but each case has a direct correlation to the growth and discovery of the character. It’s an interesting hybrid in the way that you could only do it in the UK because it’s a character driven piece with procedural elements. He’s a fly off at the mouth, say anything, hot tempered guy and he runs foul of the skittish British sensibility…”

But first up is the one man show. I tell him I can’t wait to see his show live. It has stand up comedy elements and Q&A. When Lowe endured of those infamous VH1 roasts, no one enjoyed it more than him. He loves a bit of self-roasting. Roasts are scary, people insult you but he was ‘bring it on’. He is thrilled by self-deprecation.

“I’m so excited to see how it plays in the UK. It’s predominantly comedy. I give myself a pretty good beating.”

Why does he do that? Pause.

“All my heroes – and I say this in no way self reverentially – were big movie stars who owned it, had tons of charisma and didn’t shy away from it and were unbelievably self-deprecating and self-aware. They got the joke yet they were also being very serious. So it’s in that spirit that I write my books.”

The books flow. They are serious without taking themselves seriously.

“This is like having a third book that I can continue to amend. A living, breathing thing. My reference and inspiration for the first book was David Niven. Niven had a way of writing that delivered everything you want from a celebrity memoir.”

Humour, revelation and flow. “And self-deprecation. Get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. There’s a substance to his book like when you’re done with it, it’s not disposable.”

And I would say it’s the same of Lowes, which opens with the John Kennedy Jr moments and goes through his uncomfortable family set up (parents divorced when he was 4) The gregarious father was absent and his mother, a teacher, loved language.

Born in Dayton, Ohio he was a working actor at 8, in repertory at 15. There’s a punchy chapter about his excitement at being chosen for The Outsiders and his anguish when he saw most of his scenes had been cut.

Of course, it’s a compelling read – what eighties fame felt like from the inside and how it slipped away. He doesn’t slip away from his infamous incident the night before the Democratic national convention. He was there at 24 supporting Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. He took two girls that he met in a nightclub back to his hotel room. His age had been checked rigidly. He assumed theirs had but one was only 16. Their encounter was filmed and the result was the very first leaked sex tape. The 16-year olds mother brought a civil suit against Lowe who ended up with a fine and 20 hours community service.

In the book he says that that night “would set in motion events that would ultimately, through a painful, long and circuitous path, lead me to greater happiness and fulfilment than I could ever have hoped for”

In the book he describes his return to TV in the West Wing and all of thats nuances…

“Writing a book for me was like writing an album. Do I want to open with a hit or the radio single? When Vanity Fair excerpted it, they opened with the radio single, the story about the casting of The Outsiders. All of my life I wanted to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. I never got it for my acting but my writing. For me Kennedy is the lead single (the hit). I also looked at having too many ballads, too many epic songs and that’s how I edited the book. When I do the show live, it’s the live album version as opposed to the studio version.

“What I wear has been an evolution. I started with a crisp suit, no tie, now it’s black jeans, black work boots, grey T shirt, leather jacket. It went from movie star to rock star. I base my entrance on the Rolling Stones. One of their nineties tours where all of a sudden there was a flash and they were just there. I don’t have a flash but I’m just there. It doesn’t feel like a show. It feels like a chat. The best part is the section where people ask questions.”

Are there any questions that he dreads? “No. the more unusual and off topic, the better the show is.” I wonder if US audiences talk about the sex tape, now 25 years old.

“I’ve done hundreds of Q&A’s with lots of questions each night and that never comes up.” I wonder if the British audiences are different in that they love the whiff of scandal, the idea of the beautiful being taken down into an ugly world, whereas American audiences prefer to raise people up.

“I don’t have any qualms about anything in my life. Everything’s in my book.” And it is. Those events are intimately depicted. He doesn’t shy away from it. It’s Lowe’s belief, if you front it out it makes it interesting, not dark and it adds to your charisma.

“I get a lot of West Wing questions and I love that. A lot of Parks and Rec questions.” His co-star in that, Rashida Jones referred to him as a benevolent narcissist. He beams when I bring it up, or is that the double expressos arriving?

“The show’s good for all ages. Kids who’ve rediscovered The Outsiders, middle aged women, maybe their husbands, predominantly female but not exclusively which is why you never know what subject they’re interested in.”

His career has been diverse, perhaps that’s the clue to its longevity. “I think you’ve got to have the goods. That’s prerequisite. Then you’ve got to be decently fortunate and pick the right things. Very few people can get it right every time.”

He says if he’d still been drinking, “It would have been over for me for sure. First of all, because of the pace of which I live my life… I did two years of a gruelling show called Code Black, a medical drama, then I went into directing, starring and editing a remake of The Bad Seed. And then I went to Africa for 6 weeks and shot a Netflix romantic comedy movie – Christmas in the Wild – it’s me and Kristin Davis. It’s in the vein of Eat, Pray, Love but in Africa. And then I partnered up with the people who made American Ninja Warrior and we made a version of it – the ultimate obstacle course but for the mind. The most technically complex set every built for a competition series. And my one man show – doing that is as close to being a rock star as I’ll ever get.

“Bradley Cooper’s done very well this year. Everyone’s raving about A Star Is Born and it’s a movie about addiction.”

Does that mean he’s slightly feeling it should have been him up there with the Kris Kristofferson beard, singing, talking amorously to Lady Gaga’s nose. “No.” He says he’s too busy getting on with what he has done to think about what he didn’t do.

His Bad Seed movie for Lifetime TV was a remake of the film noir about a child serial killer. He says, “I’m really proud of it. My books, my one man show and The Bad Seed are the most personal things I’ve ever done because they’re mine and I’m not for hire…”

He downs his double expresso. He once said he’d like to have an caffeine IV drip feed him. He corrects himself. “I love working with the great collaborators.”

The great collaborators of The West Wing tried to stop him getting the solo cover of George magazine which seems a bit mean because he was the name that got the show on TV in the first place. No one had heard of writer Aaron Sorkin back then.

“Sometimes you think you’re crazy and I think was it as intense as I remember? The other day somebody had me sign the cover of the first season DVD. I went to sign my picture and I couldn’t find my face because they’d put me in the back row even though I’m first billed in the show…That’s just mean.

“In all fairness the West Wing was so good it didn’t need me, but it needed me initially for people to pay attention to it and it needed me to get it on the air but after that the show was amazing, the writing was great and everybody was amazing. But everybody runs things differently. It was their show, they called it.”

I don’t think he’s losing any sleep over what happened in the nineties. I like the way he knows himself. Sure, he’s done a lot of work on himself but it’s not that. There’s no false modesty, there’s no self-aggrandisement. There is a love of language and a vivid imagination and a sense of separateness, of otherness and a need to communicate their very being. That usually comes from being an only child but he has a brother Chad.

He nods. “It’s interesting you say that. He was four years younger than me and four years is a big difference when you’re young, especially because from the time I was eight I knew what I wanted to do and every single thing in my life was seen through the lens of wanting to get where I wanted to get, even at eight. So that immediately puts you aside from everybody else.”

He was working in local theatre when he was eight and repertory when he was 15. “I was the breadwinner for the family because my dad paying child support was always a major trauma. He was a lawyer and my mother’s parents had some money. My family was solidly middle class.

But is he a benevolent narcissist?

“All my heroes are benevolent narcissists. Rashida also said that her father, Quincy Jones, is the Mount Rushmore of benevolent narcissists, so anything where I’m mentioned in the same sentence as Quincy, I’m in. There is the element with the stars that I look up to as being larger than life and being unashamed about it. They are approachable and down to earth. That combination is rare but it’s what I love.”

That’s part of the complexity that makes him charismatic. He is larger than life yet approachable and unashamed. And what’s also rare is a lasting marriage. He nods.

“I talk a lot about Sheryl in the show. If I do another version at some point, the show will be almost exclusively on me and my wife. When I talk about her the audience love it because it’s humanising. Everybody is either married, wants to be married or had a bad marriage. I have a long sequence about why it’s impossible to sleep in the same bed as my wife (don’t want to ruin his punchline here. It’s partly because she snores and partly because of her obsessive watching Family Feud 16 episodes a night).”

People want to know how does he make monogamy interesting?

“I do talk about that but a little elliptically. You need to know it’s going to be a struggle at times. I don’t believe it’s a natural arrangement in terms of nature. But in terms of society, in terms of happiness, health, wellbeing, in terms of success nothing beats it. People’s natural inclination is to have a devil on their shoulder saying ‘is this it? Is this the last first kiss I’ll ever have? Is this the last first butterflies I’ll ever have? Is this my last wild, crazy sex I’ll ever have? These are all the things that may or may not be true, that get in the way. The key to it all is the same thing that Alfred Hitchcock said when he was asked what was the key to a hit movie. ‘Casting’. And I was great at casting. Do you know the phrase the picker is broken?”

I’ve never heard that phrase – it means making bad choices. What if you let other people pick you?

“Sometimes I like to let the inertia of events make decisions for me because it takes the pressure off. I’ve done a lot of thinking on this about intimacy and sex, intimacy and love, intimacy and relationships and I’ve done a lot, a lot, a lot of work on it.”

Does he think that sexual intimacy and love intimacy can be the opposite? For instance, one can be intimate sexually with someone and not love that person and vice versa.

“Absolutely. You’ve diagnosed the problem. Many people have that problem and that’s why most people have a hard time with long term monogamy because it’s not easy, but the integration of that is where long term intimacy and long-term monogamy lives. I know this 100% to be true.”

There’s a glint in his cornflower blue eye. It’s not quite a tear. More a chink in his steadfastness. A chink that says he always knows the right thing but sometimes he struggles.

“Left to my own devices I’m right there with you but you have to work on these things. Relationships. And if you’re not willing to work it’s not going to happen. If you’re not willing to forgive it’s not going to happen. People want to die proudly on their sword and oftentimes there’s more dignity in forgiveness. People may be able to grow and change and work on themselves too and not make the same mistakes over and over.”

The sunlight catches the diamond triangle on the wizardy looking ring. Maybe being in recovery is part of the magic because people who are recovering alcoholics have been forced to rock bottom and are forced to talk openly about themselves and to themselves.

“Working on yourself is not fun. Worse than painful, it can be boring. But if I look at the lengths I used to go to to find some bad behaviour, I should be able to go to those lengths to make my life better.”

He has said that his rock bottom came when he decided to finish a bottle of tequila rather than go home to his dying grandfather. Of course, he would never do such a thing now but the fact that he once did makes him much more human.

He’s politically savvy too. Fascinated by the post Brexit world. He remembers, “watching as the vote came in and Christiane Amanpour practically vomiting and crying as the sun came up on Big Ben. There’s nothing worse than a foreigner weighing in on the affairs of another country. That said, I’m so interested. I think there’s a connection to people in the US who are feeling forgotten and ignored and who are really mad. I’m fascinated by all of it. When I was in Africa I was out of the cable news cycle. I had broken my addiction for news and I feel the better for it.”

I’m not sure if I believe that. He’s far too keen to talk about Richard Quest – British CNN newsman.

He’s looking forward to his time in post Brexit Britain because watching people and how things change interests him.

“I must say that London was a tough nut to crack. I remember vividly at the height of my teen idol phase walking the streets of London in the midday sun and it was crickets. They were very slow to the party and I remember my 21-year old ego thinking what’s going on here? I was used to walking down the street having my clothes ripped off. I walked in London in anonymity.”

Really? No one ripped his clothes off?

“Well…..Well I have to go now.”

As he strides out through the Polo Lounge, every head turns to watch him and I’m sure he won’t walk in London in anonymity again.

Barbra Streisand at 76 has come up with an album of songs that she wrote as a protest against President Trump and his regime. It’s her first album of original songs for over a decade. The songs could be love songs although the album Walls is a mixture of love and anger.

She’s wearing slinky black flares, black suede boots, a black fluffy jumper and a vintage lace collar. Around her neck is a beautiful miniature of her now departed dog Sammy, a Coton du Tolear. The white curly fluffy dog went with her to every interview, every concert and recording session.

Streisand mourned her passing “as if it was a child.” Sammy had an “oddball personality,” so it could have been her actually genetic child. She identified with her intensely. So much so that two of her new dogs Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet are clones of Sammy and a third, Fanny is a distant cousin.

We meet in a studio just across the road from her house in Malibu – the one with the rose gardens and her collection of dolls houses. The dogs didn’t join us. “Because there are three of them and they would take over. The two dogs are made from Sammy. They’re her DNA. They are clones. This is the technique – how they make clones which is used in cancer research. The pet fund wrote me a letter that said thank you for doing this. Cancer is very prevalent and growing in both cats and dogs because of the pet food industry, the pesticides etc… Nobody had to die to make a clone. They took a cell from the inside of Sammy’s cheek and another from the outside of her tummy right before she died. You don’t know if you’re going to get a dog. You can get none, you can get five and I got two.”

Presumably she went via the clone route because she loved Sammy so much she wanted to replicate her so are the puppies like her?

“Not in personality but they look just like her. They’re curly haired like her. The breeder told me she was a rarity because she was a runt. If these dogs are for shows they have straight hair. Sammy was at my last show in New York – it was such a rarity to get a curly haired one so in order to have a curly haired dog I had to clone Sammy.”

It’s easy to conjure the image of Streisand with her tight curly perm in A Star Is Born. Perhaps Sammy reminded her of herself in that. Samantha is now around her neck close to her heart forever. I tell her I have my cat Mr Love’s fur in my locket.

“Uh huh. I have a lock of her hair in my other locket.” It’s a bonding moment. We have both got dead pets round our neck. “It’s unconditional love,” she says “and you know love in sickness and health, curly or straight.

Momentarily she seems vulnerable. You want to reach out to her, hug her even. You feel you know her. You’ve known her songs all your life and her voice has touched you, slipped inside of you so easily. But despite our bonding she bristles as my arm touches her by accident. It goes back to her mother. She wasn’t a hugger and was always very critical, yet somehow despite this she found self-belief and drive. She’s been a star for a lifetime yet still she doesn’t like being photographed. She changes the subject back to the record.

“You’ve heard the album,” she says, eager to talk about it. Every time I meet her I think it’s going to be the last tour, the last show, the last album yet this work feels very fresh. It has a new and different energy to it. You can tell that she’s written a lot of the songs and the ones she hasn’t she sings in a new way. Her voice is fierce, not thin, not old. It cracks into your heart. Oddly even though it’s not about a man woman love struggle it’s passionate.

“That’s exactly right. That’s what it felt like creating it, that it had a different energy.” She has written or co-written 7 original songs which appear on the album including Walls – that keep you in as well as keep you out. It’s a plea to unite a divided country. It’s about physical walls and emotional walls.

The single Don’t Lie to Me has the lyrics “How do you win if we all lose?” She sings it like a diva. The truest sense of the word.

She includes the Burt Bacharach classic What the World Needs Now Is Love, originally written as a Vietnam protest song but equally valid if not more so today. The album ends with Happy Days. It’s a song she’s sung often at the end of her concerts and also for the Clintons at President Clinton’s inauguration and as a celebration of democracy. This time it’s sung with an irony so piquant you can feel her tears.

Lady Liberty is about “how they came from different lands, different religions, languages and culture, all seeing the American dream. The subject of immigration is complex and requires deep contemplation not knee jerk reactions. Now if you look at her face you’ll see tears falling from Lady Liberty’s eyes. Love Is Never Wrong is about love being the most powerful force in the universe. It transcends race, religion and sexual orientation – something I’ve always believed everyone has the right to love whoever they want to. I tell her the record is raw.

“Raw,” she nods. “I’ve never thought of that word for it.” Indeed, you don’t normally associate raw with Streisand. You think smooth or perhaps silky and soaring, definitely comfortable but not this. I tell her when I first heard the album, it was the first time I felt relieved that I wasn’t on Prozac because I was able to feel the full experience.

“Oh!” she says excited now. “Will you say that in the article because that’s very funny? I bet you won’t say that right. But you’re right. Prozac dulls your senses. When my mother was on it she forgot to be angry. She had dementia as well and she forgot that she was always very angry but that pill really helped.”

Maybe it was because of the dementia she forgot to be angry? “No, it was those pills.”

I told her I had a male friend who said he liked me much better on Prozac because I wasn’t angry. I kept on with it longer than I should have. “The guy or the Prozac?” Both.

She was clearly not on Prozac when writing this album because there’s a lot of anger in it. “Oh yes there is. I believe in truth and I believe if I’m truthful in what I’m singing about that comes across as being passionately upset with what is happening to my country.”

Her expression of dissatisfaction with the current president began with a series of very smart Tweets – an eloquent counterpart to the Trump potty mouth outbursts . Then she wrote articles for The Huffington Post (The Fake President and Our President Cruella de Vil) and then came the songs. They are cleverly written. They work on two levels. Love songs that can be interoperated as personal and protest love songs for the world.

“That’s right, that’s right,” she says excitedly. “I’m so glad you get this.” This is why you let me come back. Because I get it.

“Last time you brought me cake. This time I get nothing. But that’s good. I’m on a diet. It’s good you forgot.” I didn’t forget, I was told that she was trying to diet so I didn’t bring the cake “OK, but this President did make me anxious and hungry for pancakes. Buckwheat pancakes. I had to put butter on them and maple syrup to ease the pain. People don’t realise what food does for you. It makes you feel good. My son brought me pancakes at my last recording session from a great place. They’re made of oatmeal but obviously they have sugar in them and that’s why they taste so good. They’re very soothing to the brain.”

Pancakes are very American. It was as if she was eating the most delicious, the most American food to savour it, as if it too was in jeopardy.

“I live in a house that’s filled with Americana. American art, American furniture. I really love my country and it’s painful to see democracy being assaulted, institutions being assaulted and women being assaulted.”

We digress to the painful topic of women’s abortion rights and the possibility of women no longer being in control of their own bodies and having the long fought (in the early 70s) right to choose.

“Can you imagine…?” she says darkly and then, “There’s a war between people who want to live in the future and look forward to the future and people who want to live in the past. Imagine women who after forty-something years who have had the right to choose, now, perhaps won’t.”

President Trump was elected by a small majority but women certainly voted for him. Why would women vote for a man who does not let them control their own bodies? Why would women vote for misogyny?

“It’s a terribly complex thing. A lot of women vote the way their husbands vote. They don’t believe enough in their own thoughts so they trust their husbands. Maybe that woman who is so articulate, so experienced and so presidential (Hillary), so fit for the presidency, was too intimidating for some women. Perhaps she made women feel unsuccessful. Women are competitive and so forth. All of this was so devastating to me and I was heartbroken and very sad so I wanted to write about it, sing about it and deliver an album and it was perfect timing (as synagogues are being blown up and bombs delivered to any luminary who has had something bad to say about President Trump). I just did it.”

I’m not sure she realizes how brave it is to stand up and stand out and I wonder if she ever wanted to take it further – to be that woman who was articulate and presidential and could talk passionately and open people’s eyes. Surely there’s a situation vacant in the Democratic party that she may want to fill?

“No. I don’t want to go into politics. I don’t think I’m articulate enough and it’s too late for me. Maybe when I was younger but not now. I like my garden too much. I like staying home. I like privacy. I like writing my book…sort of.”

She’s still writing that autobiography? “Yeah, four years already. I’m trying to convince the publisher to do it in two volumes so I could stop the first volume with my Harvard speech.” She is very proud of this speech. “It was in a book called The 100 Greatest Speeches of the 20th Century. But they edited it without showing me and that was not nice. I like manners. People in England have manners. They are always very nice to me.”

Streisand comes across as a woman of power, a woman unafraid of being criticised because she’s in control. A woman that feels being seen as controlling isn’t a negative attribute. It’s been an interesting journey to get to that point.

In 1976, as producer and lead actress of A Star Is Born she had final cut of the movie. The ultimate control which is very rare and much sort after but she gave her power away. She cut out some of her own scenes because she didn’t want to be criticised for being a producer and having too much screen time. Why? She shakes her head.

“I love constructive criticism. It helps me learn something but I didn’t want to be … just criticised. “ Maybe this is a deep seated fear locked in by her super critical mother. There is anxiety in her eyes as she talks.

“A woman writer in the New York times criticised when I performed at the Clinton’s inauguration. She attacked my suit. It was a man’s suit and I wore great diamonds with it and a waistcoat. I like the combination of masculinity and femininity. I liked the feminisation of masculinity. I’m fascinated even in furniture, I like strong architectural lines covered in pink velvet. I like men who are masculine but have a feminine side. I like men who cry at movies and they like soft things. It just makes them complex and that’s interesting. So this woman criticised my suit with diamonds. This woman was talking about my sexuality because I was wearing a low cut vest and the legs of the trousers had a slit. I have a passion for design and that criticism was unfair.

It always seems to me unfair that she was never acknowledged as a beauty. Today she has a mesmerizing presence and her skin glows and not in an artificial way. She doesnt look fake. She has a lioness quality.

In the mid seventies people in Hollywood weren’t used to a woman being in control. She was producing ASIB for First Artists – a company originally set up for Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and herself. In exchange for no salary up front they could make their own film with full creative control and a piece of the back end which they only got if the film was a hit. Her budget was $6,000,000 and any penny spent over that had to come out of her own pocket.

“I was completely responsible for the money and the content.”

She updated the film from the Judy garland original (1954) to reflect the changing of the times.

“I wanted her to write her own songs. I wanted the character played by a liberated woman yet I gave away the title of producer and took a lessor one and I even cut out certain scenes of mine so I would have less screen time.”

Instead of being praised, she was vilified.

“I was put on a magazine cover bald and the title was ‘A Star Is Shorn’ They made me bald. Why? Because I was a woman in control and they wanted…” her voice trails. They wanted her to look horrible. “That’s right. So I got scared and I gave them power. But when I directed Yentl I had power artistically but I had a completion bond on my shoulder so I couldn’t go overbudget. I went only a tiny bit overbudget which was fine. I got an award for directing and I said it’s wonderful not to have to raise your voice because people are finally listening when you are the director. So… I’m going to direct another film and I won’t give power away in the way I did earlier.

“ When I’m directing I do give power away to make people feel they’re needed. I would make sure my understudy felt involved. ‘Why don’t you work with the cinematographer while I’m working on the script. Why don’t you measure distances for the lens and show me what marks I need to hit.’ In other words, empowering people. I want everybody to feel needed on the set.

“I enjoy working in England, perhaps because you have a Queen and you have a woman Prime Minister. I think they are less intimidated by a woman with power.”

Perhaps that just because she doesn’t live in England.

Is she acting as well as directing in the new movie?

“I can’t really talk about it. We’ve signed contracts but until I know more… I can tell you I’m not acting. I don’t like acting. I don’t like make believe. I like real life.”

That’s a shame. She’s so good at it. “I’m crap at it.” It always surprises me when she’s self-deprecating. Its part of what makes her an icon. The ability to take herself seriously and not seriously at all

The Way We Were still moves me – the ultimate impossible love story – she as the archetypal jew and Robert Redford as the archetypal WASP. It won her an Oscar nomination. She’s always played characters who had an uneasy vulnerability – you don’t expect that of her in real life. You do expect that she is a fighter, a campaigner for love, for truth, for dogs.

Its easy to feel powerless – that’s why she’s so compelled now to stand up to Trump – to grab back the power.

I just saw the new version of A Star Is Born. Whether it’s better than the previous version, divides the nation. Did she think Lady Gaga was channelling herself in some parts?

“I don’t know. Did she say anything about that? I haven’t seen it but I know they used the nose thing.”

The original movie, written by Joan Didion, made a reference to Streisand’s nose. At the time she was considered kooky looking, a prominent noise was not seen as a bonafide glamour-puss movie star nose. In the Gaga/Bradley Cooper version they overplay the nose with several references to Gaga’s nose and a lot of nose shots. At the time Streisand’s nose was considered not beautiful and she had to fight to keep it untouched in movies, on record covers and refused any nose jobs in real life. Gaga is not known for her nose but none the less the movie makes a big deal of it.

Streisand shrugs. “I haven’t seen the whole movie but I saw the beginning and it looked like mine. Bradley (Cooper) showed me that and the beginning started with the same concert and then singing in a little club.”

I note the new A Star Is Born has the same producer as her version – Jon Peters – her hairdresser who became her boyfriend and thereafter a big deal producer – with her help. Perhaps that’s why there are some of the same nuances. Because of the same producer.

“Well he was the one I gave the credit to.” Does she mean gave her power away to. “That’s right.” Because he was her boyfriend too?

“Because I wanted him to have respect on the set. He had good ideas. The first time I walked into his house he had crude burnt wood frames paired with lace curtains at the windows. He understood masculinity and femininity. He was complex. I liked that.”

I am sure she still likes Jon Peters although she does not like being reminded that she gave her power away to a man because she feared criticism for being overbearing.

It’s a complex thing, she likes strong men but not bowing down to them . She has the right balance with her husband of 20 years James Brolin

“My husband has the perfect forehead, the perfect jaw, the perfect teeth. Even when he makes me angry I still get a kick out of his symmetry”

She is also immensely loyal – she has had the same manager – Marty Erlichman for 52 years.

Someone else who works with her is waving their hands in a panic. “I have to get out. I have to go.” One more thing. “What?” she says suspiciously. A picture. Streisand has famously and repeatedly said no to impromptu pictures. She’s still afraid of a bad shot, of criticism? She says -she’s going to do it.

It takes bravery and a little bit of control. “I’ll do it but not with your phone. With mine so I can have power to delete.” She directs the way we’re sitting, tells the assistant with the phone, “you’re going down too low.” I move closer to her, so close I’m almost touching her but of course we’re not going to touch. I feel that’s making her uncomfortable.

Her hair sweeps long beyond her shoulders. It’s beigey blonde the colour of a lions mane. It even mingles with mine. I can smell her hair. It smells of roses, perhaps from her own garden. It’s a heady smell. She makes me promise that I won’t put the picture in the paper and before she goes I read her a message from my friend Nancy who grew up with a criticising mother, like Streisand’s, and wanted me to let her know, “She’s helped me throughout my life. She’s my secret mother. I love her. I love the way she sings with skill and abandon. I love what she’s doing today. It shows the spirit of women and it shows that I was right to love her. No one else is sticking their neck out politically and she’s on the right side of history.”

She’s taken the picture and she’s taken the compliment and she likes it very much that she’s on the right side of history.

My all-consuming memory of Luciano Pavarotti is a great volcano of a man emerging from his swimming pool wearing a straw hat and a giant smile. The latter crushing and melting into terror when he noticed I was wearing a purple dress. Purple is the colour of death, or at least according to his religion or superstition.
I felt guilty. He did die a few years later in 2007 but not hopefully from my purple dress. He had pancreatic cancer. At the end he was a shadow of his former 25 stone self. People close to him say he remained optimistic, refused to see anything bad. That was what he was like. A contradiction, seeing good in bad and death in purple dresses. He always wanted to spread the love, but at the same time he was very volatile. He was one of those men who loved women. That is always a little scary – a man who loves women usually needs more than one of them.
He was married to his first wife Adua for 35 years. He had become estranged from this relationship when he met the quietly charismatic Nicoletta Mantovani. When they met she was in her early 20’s and he was 57. She came looking for a part time job to help her through her Doctorate in biology at Bologna university but Pavarotti wasn’t having any of that. He wanted to swoop her off her feet round the world and always be with him.
We are in the private dining room of the Gritti Palace in Venice and if I peer over the table centrepiece – a bowl of perfect Italian vegetables, I can take in Mantovani. She’s one of these people who seems to be able to walk around with several layers of her skin peeled off. She doesn’t care how vulnerable she is. She’s been hated by a lot of people but this small sparrow of a woman was able to set that aside and look after her husband and their daughter Alice.
She exudes caring without being overbearing. She’s interested, curious in what other people have to say but not prying. When the third course of food comes she jokes about how she and her husband’s big fights came when she tried to put him on a diet.
Theirs was an intriguing partnership. While Pavarotti had always striven to bring opera to the people, it was their concept together to bring pop to opera and she produced several successful concerts in the early 2000s – Pavarotti and Friends where popstars like Bono and Zuccero and Lionel Ritchie came to Modena to sing with the big man. She was good at these big ideas but apparently had no actual secretarial skills.
The cliché would be pretty young girl baits and tantalises multi-millionaire operatic king. She might have worn heels, tiny skirts, push up bras. That’s not who she ever was. She’s now 47 with prettily layered tawny hair, black comfortable clothes and flat shoes. Trademark cats eye glasses and strangely more attractive than the young girl who doesn’t seem to fit into her body.
She says she didn’t want to be sucked into his world. She fought it but she felt it was a coup de foudre although she says this in Italian. Coup de foudre doesn’t really translate into English.
Now she’s in the business of looking after the legacy that Luciano Pavarotti left the world. He was consistently described as the world’s greatest tenor with sales of over 100 million records. His music should live on.
Hence, we are here in the very fancy Gritti Palace Hotel in Venice with its views of the Grand Canal and its very special ravioli and Acqui di Parma products in all of the suites.
We are here because she has partnered with Decca Luxe, a new venture that is as over the top as the maestro himself. The concept is – creating a product of rare luxury and a price of £84,000. It’s for people who already have their top of the range Bentleys and their yachts and houses dotted around the world for them to sail between.
They get a box, a very special box, only ten of them will be made in the world by David Linley, Lord Snowdon. Each box would have been 1,000 hours in the crafting. The box will feature limited edition prints of Pavarotti’s paintings which are brightly coloured as naïve as they are sophisticated. You also get the Windsor and Newton oil paints from his palette – a lifetime supply. You get every note he ever recorded including newly discovered tracks in the Decca archives and a player which will give you immersive sound. Immersive sound is a thing of the future. Apparently five years ahead of its time, and in this box. Remember when people thought that VR and AR were the next big thing? Well, now it’s this. A sound so immersive you feel that the man himself is sitting in the room with you. A sound system borrowed from cinemas, the kind of which best sound editing Oscars are given. You know the ones – you’re right there in the battle, in the love, in the pain, in all of it. And then they win a best sound editing Oscar.
And as a person who doesn’t see the point of VR and AR, I was ready to dismiss it but sitting there in the Gritti Palace where Luciano Pavarotti loved to hang out, you feel wrenched emotionally when they turn it off and put on a regular stereo.
In this package called A Life in Art you also get dinner with Nico Mantovani cooked by Pavarotti’s favourite chef and you go on a Pavarotti diet and some of your money goes to his foundation. A bargain I hear you thinking. You also get flown there by private jet which means unfortunately you have to go to Luton, voted consistently Britain’s worst airport, but you soon get over that even though the plane is tiny. They give you enough booze to make you forget about it.
Mantovani was not what I expected. Certainly not the femme fatale, not the husband stealer, although there’s certainly a strength to her. She stopped the publication of Pavarotti’s assistant Edwin Tinoco’s memoir. Not because it was salacious and gossipy, but because she didn’t think he would have wanted it. It didn’t fit in with his legacy.
When they first met, Pavarotti warned her she might be described as somebody “not nice”. All that stuff was easy when he wasn’t there to protect her. “It was harder.
“He warned me that everyone would think I was after his money. We talked about it a lot. He asked me if I was prepared to be seen as somebody not nice.”
How this operatic romantic tragedy unfolded is just far too complicated to describe as just not nice. Scrutiny was inevitable when they met because of the age gap of 34 years. Mantovani wasn’t even born when he married his first wife and Alice and his grandchild are around the same age. Yet, “Luciano always thought of me as the older one. I was more grown up.” He was middle aged, rich and famous. She was young, tiny, not rich and a student.
During their 15-year marriage, there were certainly a few knives out for her, especially at the end when people reported falsely that their marriage was over. No doubt marriage was stressed because she was dealing with her husbands’ terminal illness which he himself decided to treat with more courses of optimism than chemo. She never left his side and made sure that their then 4 ½ year old daughter was with him too so she would have the memories.
Obviously this prodigious and prodigiously rich man would have all the relatives fighting for the spoils.
Under Italian law 25% of his wealth goes to Mantovani, 50% is split between his 4 daughters, leaving another 25% in question. And questions were asked as he’d made 3 wills.
The next day we go to Modena to the house where they lived which is now a museum and restaurant and we experience first-hand the Pavarotti diet. Across the table you see her eyes are flecked with multicolours. She misses nothing. She’s not wearing make-up but the hair is good. She’s made an effort but not too much of one and you like that about her.
Endless cheese and endless sorts of salami and fried dumplings that are called called Gnocco Fritto. You eat with salty prune jam. Then there’s a large plate of buffalo mozzarella, potato, pesto and balsamic vinegar.
Modena has become one of the food capitals of the world with chef Massimo Patron with his 3 Michelin stars nearby. After this we get a Pavarotti’s personal favourite is thick al dente risotto drizzled in balsamic vinegar – he liked to drink this with red sparkling wine – Lambrusco.
Mantovani tells me, “he thought the combination of the risotto and the wine were very healthy. They made you happy so they were healing. He was obsessed with this particular wine, this particular balsamic and this particular salami and of course his own pasta so that wherever he went in the world his entourage would each have to hide the food contraband in their luggage.”
Mantovani adds that she’s not sure if she’s allowed in the US these days as she was always the one who got caught with the forbidden substances like cheese. Pavarotti’s relationship with food was integral to his being. He didn’t eat to blot out emotional pain. He ate for pleasure. He liked his size. It made women feel like they were surrendering to him.
Mantovani says, “even now I miss those hugs – like big panda hugs.”
After our risotto came a salad with strawberries and more balsamic, then an orange blossom ice cream with a walnut caramel balsamic sauce. The man who runs the restaurant sees me about to fall into a food coma and provides espresso.
Mantovani and I go upstairs, just above the bedroom that she and her husband shared. She now lives in Bologna with her parents and daughter and is strangely unperturbed by inviting the public into the home they once shared which is now a museum filled with his notes, his costumes, his paintings and his music.
“I feel it’s a place where people can relax because they can feel him. He was very happy here because he always loved life. He had a very positive presence. He was always able to take the very best out of you. I don’t know how he did it but he did it with everyone. You always felt much better to sit next to him. I tell her that last night when we had the immersion sound it made me cry and I don’t know why. It must have been really emotional for her?
“Yes. It was really strong. It was like having him here in front of me in the room, yet 11 years have passed since he left us. And when he left, part of me left with him…”
She composes herself. “We decided to do this and work with the foundation in order to bring his passions to life. He had a big passion for giving back. He did a lot of charity work, especially with refugees. Music, like sport can keep people united. We have a school in Bosnia that we founded with Bono and two schools in Guatemala. And right now. we’re helping young singers which he always did till the end of his life. He was always teaching them how to be with themselves in public, how to have not just a voice but the right attitude. He wanted his academy to be free because he never went to a conservatory. He always said, ‘a voice is like a white flower. It can grow everywhere, even in the desert but you have to look for it’. In Italy it’s very expensive to create such an academy” (there’s no tax relief for charity).
A percentage of the Decca Luxe boxes will go to the foundation. Mantovani’s English is fluent. Her emotions organised. Not at all like Pavarotti’s. They were very different. You can see also how when something troubles her it troubles her deeply.
“I think he enjoyed every minute of his life because when he was 12 he had an accident playing soccer and he got tetanus. It was during the war when people played with no shoes. He went into a coma for many days. He got penicillin and was saved but from that moment he said I’m going to be happy always. He found ways that bad things can help you become a better person.”
She slips effortlessly into nostalgia and romance. We go over that coup de foudre moment. “I’d not been working for him long and he asked me if I would leave with him for a couple of days to go to Switzerland. I said no and he said ‘come to the airport to say goodbye’, I said OK. The minute I saw him leave I took a plane. That was Culpo di fulmine.”
When love strikes someone like lightning. “That was him. When you let yourself be open to any experience you don’t put any limit on them. He had no borders. No borders in music or in life. As Bono said, ‘he didn’t just sing opera – he was opera’. He was never bothered if he didn’t have a nice review. He would just say, ‘people are free to think what they want.’ Like when he was criticised in the British Press for hugging Princess Diana because it wasn’t Royal protocol. The papers said ‘shame on you’ and he said ‘I was very happy that I got to hug her’.”
When Mantovani and Pavarotti met she was studying biology and completely unable to sing. “We were strangers, completely different kinds of people. Maybe we knew each other from a past life. Everyone was asking him to explain what it was he really liked about me and what happened. He would say ‘if you can explain love, it’s not love’. He would say to me was I ready? Was I prepared? But he was my guardian angel, protecting me from what everyone said. We were always together. It’s different now although I still feel him as a different kind of guardian angel. And now people have stopped talking bad about me, I mean after so many years.”
But what about the rumours that he was about to get back with his first wife on his deathbed and give her all his money?
She sighs, quietly dismissing it. “‘When you are a public figure, you have to accept everything bad and good’ he would say. You cannot play a game where everyone is on your side. You cannot be loved by everyone. I wonder if he left us now, after all this social networking how different it would be.”
Would he have had an Instagram account? “No. he liked to exhibit himself for sure but he was never vain, narcissistic. The engine of his life was that he was always open to new experiences. He was curious – always wanted to try something. He was the first in mixing pop music with opera (his crossover Pavarotti and Friends concert in the noughties).”
Opera was his pop music. “So that’s why he had the idea to bring it to the people even if he was attacked by the purists of opera lovers.”
The moment where he decided to paint came after he played Cavaradossi, a painter in a Tosca opera in the eighties and someone gave him a box of paints.
“He said suddenly he was acting at painting and then he was painting. He painted for one week and didn’t eat and that was a big thing for him.” We laugh. He didn’t like to go long without food so he must have really been obsessed.
She shows me a painting that he and Alice painted together when she was really tiny. Very sweet. It’s blues and yellows, sky and sunshine. She shows me a picture on her phone of the now 16-year old Alice who was four and a half when he died. She looks very rock n roll but has her father’s eyes.
“I don’t think she has a memory of him but she has a lot of stories that have been told to her. She has a deep sense of justice that Luciano had. he was always fighting with his whole self to protect people. Luciano was a very pure soul. Some people think he was childish but he never had any prejudice and always saw the good in people and I think it’s genetic.
“He would always ask a lot of questions. He was never afraid to ask anything like ‘why do you like that science stuff?’ The basis or our relationship was always talking. 24 of hours of the day talking and trying to understand each other’s deepest thoughts and we were always so different. It seemed to give him energy. He would always say ‘you are the eldest of us. You are the old one’ and even if I was 25 he would say ‘could you stop being so old.’”
The first turning point in their relationship came when Mantovani went to a doctor and was diagnosed with MS and the doctor said ‘in a few years you’ll be in a wheelchair.’
“That made Luciano crazy because it’s a terrible thing to say to a young girl and thank God they’ve made lots of progress with the treatment. When we had this response from the doctor I told Luciano I couldn’t stay with him anymore because I would be a big weight. He said ‘until now I loved you but from now on I adore you and the two of us together will win’. I cried and he said ‘no, don’t cry. We’ll make it’. He was really my engine.
First off, Mantovani was given drugs that had side effects so bad she decided to quit them. Recently, she saw a doctor called Zamboni where she had surgery to substitute a vein. He’s based in Ferrar.
“It’s very controversial and some neurologists don’t think it’s right. Worldwide it is recognised that there is a sickness created in the vein block but it’s not necessarily recognised as working for MS. It’s not for everyone – there are so many different kinds of MS but it seems to be working for me.
“In the beginning of my diagnosis Luciano would say ‘it’s not a bad thing. From now on you will change your priorities. Now you won’t take the flowers for granted’. He said this because the MS made me lose sight for two weeks.”
There are two basic types of MS. One intermittent and one progressive. She was told that she may not be able to get pregnant but of course she did. She actually had twins but Alice’s brother Ricardo wasn’t as strong.
“They were both born premature at 7 months. She was a tiny, tiny girl and unfortunately her twin brother had died before. I have beautiful memories of Luciano carrying her around. He was the one who fed her. He came at her with the bottle when she didn’t have enough power to suck and he’d cry ‘you eat! And he made it fun for her.”
Did he really eat like this every day – the cheese, the meats, the risotto, the ice cream, the wine, the dumplings?
“He had pasta every day for sure and he had a lot of butter on food and I was always trying to put him on a diet. We always had fights over that but it was fun and he could also ask me if I could avoid singing to Alice because my voice was so bad and he said I was destroying her ears. He tried to teach me for the longest time because he said at the beginning ‘everyone can sing’ and then he said ‘every rule has an exception and you are that one’. We spent some time where he would perform the soprano role and I would perform the tenor and he would imitate my very bad voice.”
“At the very beginning of our relationship he lost weight then gained it back. Up again down again like a rollercoaster. He used food as his medicine. It gave him a sense of protection.”
Does she mean he wanted a layer of fat to protect him from the world? “It could be but he was not insecure. He had a taste for good food and he was very serious about it.”
I wondered when he was sick from cancer and on chemo if he was still able to enjoy his food? “Not really. He realised he was sick but he was positive for the future. On the one hand he accepted his situation saying ‘I’ve had such a lucky life, a fantastic career, I’ve explored my passion, I’ve helped others and I have a beautiful wife and a beautiful family and 3 daughters before that. He felt lucky.”
She tells me how he worked up until the very end planning his future as if he would go on forever. When he was sick he could still sing. His students would say ‘when he is sick I can hear his technique even better’ and he loved that. he could still sing because he had a fantastic vocal technique and when he was sick he was forced to use it even more. He had the surgery to remove a tumour and then he did the chemotherapy.”
Did he accept that he was dying? “I think he always thought he had a positive future.”
It must have put a strain on your relationship, you knowing how sick he was and him trying to unknow it?
“We were always trying to be positive together because Alice was very young. We coped with his illness as we did with mine. He was always strong for everybody else. I always saw him like a lion so he was….” Her voice drifts at this change of dynamic. “When he was a lion I was a lion with him.”
And when he wasn’t? At this point something really strange happens. For no reason, my tape recorder and my phone fling themselves off the little table between our two creamy leather armchairs. It was as if he was there with us and he didn’t like any talk of sickness or weakness. She composes herself.
“Until the very end he was positive and teaching and surrounded by friends. He was the strong one. He was actually trying to make a new album.
It must have been an excruciating shock to go through the world where they were together all the time, even reading the Harry Potter books to each other, to be without him. Certainly the idea of working with his foundation, opening up the museum is her idea to keep him alive in the world.
“Yes, I miss him and the thing I miss most are his hugs like a panda. This house was too big for just me and Alice so I decided to open it to the public and go and live with my parents in Bologna. He loved this house so much but it was too big for me and Alice.”
Mantovani herself doesn’t find it as easy as her husband did to be happy. These past few years she says have been “heavy” for her. There was a relationship that didn’t work out because the man lied to her and was seeing someone else at the same time. She almost lost her faith in humanity until she refocused into doing so much for the foundation.
“I don’t think there will ever be anyone else. One big love in life is enough, don’t you think?”
Not really. Pavarotti had two great loves, two wives.
“He was more open than me. More curious and more genuine. I’ll try my best but it’s not easy.”
Instead, she wants to take me downstairs to another room in the house where we can see messages from all over the world about how much Pavarotti affected people. The room is called the man who creates emotion.
“because he was always able to create big emotions. Not just for opera lovers.”
He was also able to cause a drama. One time they were in New York and they had a fight, Mantovani insisted she was leaving and going back to Italy but Pavarotti had called the head of Alitalia to stop her getting on the plane and to tell her he’d broken his arm.
“I got home and in full dramatic mode he said ‘you left me alone and look what happened. My world collapsed’. We were having dinner and I was kissing his arm and a couple of hours after the dinner ended I said are you OK? He said ‘of course I’m ok’ and whipped his arm out of the fake bandage.”
We laugh. What did they fight about? “We were always fighting because there was fire in us, fire is passion. But he also did big things for me. When I took my exams in the university of Bologna I went to dinner with my family and heard his voice in my ear. He’d taken a plane from Tokyo where he was performing Tosca just to say he loved me and flew back to Tokyo the next day.”
It’s no surprise that all this drama is to be made into a movie and a stage show. First up it’s a documentary from director Ron Howard and then a West End show. John Berry, British opera producer has bought the rights to his life.
Mantovani herself is producing another movie. It’s about an important figure in the Italian gay and lesbian movements in the seventies. Of the musical she says, “This is a very important project for the West End. There are many ideas so far and I don’t know which way we’ll go. His life was so immense.”
She takes me downstairs to a golden coloured bedroom, sunlight streaming in. the presence on his side of the bed is palpable. This is where he lived, loved, died. In the bathroom which is ensuite, there’s a large set of scales. She tells me sometimes she goes in there and for no reason the scales tip to Pavarotti’s weight and then go down to zero again, back and forth. Perhaps he’s telling her that he’s still here and oddly, the subject they fought most about – his weight, is still the metaphor for an enduring passion.

You have to be quite brave to wear an all-white tent dress with a round neck – even if it is Valentino. La Plante greets me from a corner booth in her creamy beige hotel in Los Angeles and says “I’m ready for my pre-med,” referring to her designer dress that looks like a hospital gown and bursts into cackling giggles. Lynda La Plante is brave in so many ways. And funny.

Her original TV series Widows was one of televisions most watched in the 1980s over 18 million viewers. It was an event. Landmark TV, story of an all-female heist, unknowns cast as leads who later would become household names like Ann Mitchell who played Dolly Rawlins (Eastenders)

Widows has now been made into a powerful movie by Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) starring Viola Davies, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell and Elisabeth Debicki. The movie is quite different from the TV series – for instance it’s set in modern day Chicago and a name has been changed – Dolly is now Veronica – but the premise is the same. Three armed robbers blow themselves up in a failed heist and the wife of the crimes leader discovers his notebook and detailed plans for jobs and they team up with the other widows to finish the men’s work. The film is exciting, sexy, powerful, emotional with all of the unexpected punches of the original – already an Oscar buzz about it and the film opened the London Film Festival on October 10th.

La Plante is here in Los Angeles pitching a different TV series to various networks and enjoying the gentle afterglow of the Widows buzz as well she deserves – last year was a terrible year where she thought she was having a nervous breakdown. ITV commissioned a prequel to Prime Suspect, Tennison 1973, which centred around the young DC Tennison, the character that was to make Helen Mirren a superstar and Lynda La Plante a force to be reckoned with. The ITV version had almost no force at all. La Plante had to take her name off it. It was humiliating.

La Plante does humiliation well – as long as she’s telling the story. She comes to the West Coast for TV meetings but not that often. She has homes in the UK and in the Hamptons on the East Coast, thus has never got to know California.

“A few years ago, before sat nav, I had to drive to Montecito for lunch. Because I have no sense of direction I got up really early and drove off in a rented little sports car. Lunch with my friend was at 12.30 but I got there at 9.30. So, I thought I’ll just go and sit by their pool and let myself in to this very elegant place, changed in the pool house, helped myself to beautiful iced drinks from the fridge and fluffy towels. I was there quite a while when someone came out and said, ‘Who are you?’ I’m Lynda La Plante and he said, ‘You are in the wrong house.’ I used their suntan cream, their towels, their drinks and my friend lived a few doors down. By the time I got to her I was still an hour early.”

She laughs loudly at herself, almost frightening the waitress who is bringing the coffee. The breakfast at the wrong house anecdote gives more than a clue to who she is. A woman who doesn’t care if she’s out of place. She’ll just get on with it. The more you know her, the more you realise she has all the bravery of the tough women heroines she’s created and all of the heart.

La Plante was born in Liverpool in 1943, a middle child with an older brother and younger sister. She was an actress until she created and wrote the series Widows, followed by the sequel She’s Out. She spent years in prisons, bordellos, mortuaries for research. Her first novel The Legacy was published in 1987. More international best sellers came and in 1991 she created Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. She has 3 Baftas and two Emmy’s for Prime Suspect and was awarded a CBE in 2008.

Her father was devoted to the gold course, her mother loved sports and was buried in a Liverpool shirt. She wouldn’t watch anything of Lynda’s on TV if it clashed with the football. When Prime Suspect was on its third series, she once asked ‘Did you write that?’

La Plante continues, “I’m here (in LA) because of Widows (seeing final screenings) and I’m pitching a series with Tom Fontana (Emmy winning writer/producer of Homicide: Life on The Street, St Elsewhere and Borgia). All the studios say they don’t want anything quite as violent as I’m used to. Then they keep saying how do I see the second season, the third season…”

We agree that the golden age of the box set is perhaps over forever and why can’t there just be one good series?

She is used to being a lone voice in a room where she’s pitching. ITV questioned her creative control as a writer/producer/show runner. They wanted the Tennison character, but it seems nothing else of La Plante. She found it shocking.

“Because I didn’t have control at casting, at producing, getting the crew… It used to be a joy to me. Being an actress for so long I knew intuitively if someone was good. (She trained at RADA, worked with the RSC and was on TV in Z Cars and The Sweeney) I love actors. Sam James the casting director walked out, couldn’t take it. The abuse I saw during the casting was really quite something. The director would say do it again, do it again, do it again but without any notes. He didn’t believe in notes.”

There’s a smell of calm in the creamy beige hotel and fresh floral arrangements but still a smell of outrage in our booth. Does she feel that it would be a lot different if the casting had taken place just after the events of #metoo rather than just before? She laughs, “Yes, it would have been much better.”

Did she feel dismissed as a woman? Dismissed because she’s not young? (She’s 75) She doesn’t know which it is. She’s not used to being dismissed. All her projects have involved prodigious research. Her knowledge of police and police procedure is phenomenal and outside of that she is credited with discovering the then unknown Idris Elba when she cast him in The Governor and a young Paul Bettany in Killer Net. Perhaps the other producers were slightly in awe of her, afraid of her?

“No, they were just amateurs. Scared of any decisions or any risk,” she dismisses.

“Someone at ITV found an actor that they wanted to play the lead but I said, “He can’t act,” and they said, “But he’s very attractive.”I said, “He can’t walk and talk at the same time,” and they said, “You don’t understand, he’s very attractive.” He was cast and by the time the reviews came out I had walked.One of the reviews said when the bomb went off in the bank and this actor was burnt he probably burned up very quickly because he was so wooden!I cut it out and sent it to them.” More giggling.

Some people might have thought this was childish. For her it seems a small triumph. She doesn’t care if she never works for ITV again. The original Widows was on Thames (ITV). She says you could never get it on TV now. She cast black people and mixed-race people in leads rather as maids and butlers and in the eighties this was in itself a revolution. She was always a woman ahead of her time. That must be why she clashed with the male bosses at ITV.

“No, I think they were egocentric amateurs. That’s it. They wanted to do what they wanted to – whatever I wanted they didn’t care.”

Would it have made a difference if she was a man? There’s a pause as long as you could smoke a cigarette in.

“Probably,” she concedes. “The emotions of stress and frustration was difficult to deal with. I felt heartbroken. I had spent so long working with the old cops, so much research…(all of her input dismissed). What was the most shocking of all was when the man who commissioned it had lunch with me at the Ivy. I said I’ve got all the material, I’ve got Jane Tennison, I’ve written a book. He looked at me and said ‘Unfortunately for you, you don’t own these characters. We do and if we wanted to make our own series of Jane Tennison we could. We wouldn’t do that,’ but that’s exactly what they did. From day one they wanted me out.

“Franchise of the novel continues and they are huge worldwide. I own the other characters and two other production companies have liked them and I’m in talks to develop a series around them.

“ITV also decided to change the killer and not kill another character off. I was bypassed at every single level so I took my name away. John Heyman (producer who died recently and father of Harry Potter super producer David) told me, ‘don’t waste a second being angry. You want revenge, be a success.”

Indeed, she’s now on book number 4, Murder Mile, in a series of 10 Tennison books which is about to drop. Widows has been re-released and a best seller in many countries, with new territories added almost weekly. She’s in the Best Seller list of several countries every week. She’s pitching her new crime show with Fontana which she says is exciting and the book Widows continues to roll. In Australia it’s already in its 6th reprint. Rights have been sold everywhere from Japan to Russia. Widows the novel has been expanded and enhanced from the original work and it’s still a ripping read.

Although she is not officially on the payroll for Widows the movie, she is ultimately the creator of these characters and as thus she is able to bathe in the large pools of its success.

She smiles. “The extraordinary development is that Widows is rearing its head like a monster…

“I met Steve McQueen at an event at Buckingham Palace honouring members of the Royal Academy.John Hurt was there.He had this shaggy moustache, maybe it was for a film and his hair was standing on end.He took me aside and said, ‘Everybody here looks so fucking old,’ and he died a few weeks later.”

La Plante is more than aware of time passing. Friends Lynda Bellingham and Cilla Black both now gone means she doesn’t want to lose a day, an hour even. At the same party, McQueen came up to her. “Are you Lynda LaPlante,” he said.I didn’t know who he was. He is quite a formidable person, large.He said, “My name is Steve McQueen,’ and he had just made 12 Years a Slave.He said, “I have been obsessed with Widows since I was a child.’ He told me how he watched it as a teenager and it stayed with him. It was dormant in him and he’d like to make a movie.And I thought that would be absolutely incredible.He has been so respectful.” La Plante didn’t write the script but she was consulted at every turn.

“The notes sessions were incredible, where did you find these women?,” he would ask. “And I went through all the lives of all the women I had met in prison and he was, ‘Tell me more, more, more.’ He sent the script and I had a lot of notes, every note that I had he would say, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ and that is how we worked.

“He is quite boyish when he wants something.He said, ‘You have a lot of humour.Why do you have this humour?’ and we laughed.And I said, ‘If you laugh with somebody you like them.’ Dolly Rawlins comes over as hard hitting like a hammer, but she’s got to make mistakes and jokes so you like her. In the movie she is Ronnie. If you were making this for TV first off, they’d say Dolly Rawlins has got to be Olivia Coleman and the glamorous one would have to have several TV credits.

The film so far has been receiving rave reviews. Producer Eain Canning says “I did not set out to write a film about diversity but we knew we had a very significant female voice echoing the original. This is a contemporary love letter to Lynda’s Widows. She very definitely has a voice in it. We wanted to make sure that the original spirit was there so she was part of the process. We didn’t set out to make a film about diversity but that is Chicago. We simply reflected what we saw on the streets. Steve and I are equally surprised that people are surprised that this story connects with audiences, just like Lynda’s TV show connected. It’s crazy that in 2018 we’re still talking about it being abnormal to have a film with female leads. Hopefully it will be the last time people focus on this.”

It’s almost as if the feminist clock had been ticking backwards and that there was more freedom for women in television in the eighties.

“When I originally cast Eva Motley (British born Barbadian actress in the role of Bella), the casting director was nervous because she had just come out of prison.I remember reading something about Lauren Bacall when she first worked with Bogart she found it very difficult to lift her eyes, she looks down and then up (she mimics this and looks quite Princess Diana) I noticed that Eva did that. She had a gruff voice, yet this vulnerability.Director Ian Toington was a man who loved women and said, ‘I think she is scared but wonderful.’

It was a risk, that nowadays, she would not be allowed to take.

“I see Eva every day of my life in a poster in my office. She committed suicide before the second series.Every time I think about her, I always want to make a film in her memory.”

Now this fearless, tiny juggernaut of a woman, a woman who’s been chopped down and always stood up again, has large tears rolling down her face.

“It was like her dream had come true and then it turned into a nightmare.”In many ways there are parallels here. La Plante’s dreamed of another TV series and then it became her nightmare.

“I’ll fight and I will be as strong as I can be.I have always been on my own, I have never had back up until recently where I have had people working close with me and it’s changed my life, that I could trust people.Going into those rooms pitching totally solo and I would be saying things like, ‘This girl is no good,’ and them saying, ‘Well we all like her.’”

Widows has been the opposite experience – inclusive and respectful. Although the is set in a different era, a different city, “the emotions are the same.” More than ever, it’s a movie that’s right for this time. It’s about women not putting up with abuse and being sidelined. It’s about women rising up and women doing it better.

“It’s quite violent.” But it’s a powerful, emotional, heart stopping use of violence. It’s interesting to her that in her recent pitching, the networks all seem to want the violence toned down or taken out altogether. They see it as gratuitous.

“The thing I have always disapproved of is gratuitous nudity. For example, in Tennison there was a 17-year old victim.We cast a young girl – in the script it very clearly states that the only thing you can see is her Biba boot. The police officer looks and says she is very young.She is covered, it’s raining.In the TV series you see her whole body. That girl was left naked for hours and hours.It’s abuse.There was an autopsy scene where this young naked girl lay on a trolley for ages while the crew drank coffee.That’s men, male directors, unasked for, unnecessary, abusive.I am very protective of actors.”

Does she think she could take an occasional acting role? In our meeting she’s done quite a few accents including five different Liverpudlian ones. “I don’t think I could act now, I walk into furniture because of my eye problems.”

In January she had cataract operations that went wrong.

“I had glasses everywhere. All over the house.I thought, oh I think I’ll have laser surgery.I went in to have the laser and they said,’ You are too old to have the laser, you have slight cataracts. What we can do is get rid of the cataract and insert lenses so you will never have to wear glasses again.Both eyes at the same time.Everybody I have met says you never have both eyes at the same time but off I went.”

Was this blind optimism or too busy to really think about it?

“Don’t know. They told me it’s just a couple of weeks recovery time and before that things will just be a bit blurred.After two weeks and drops and drops and drops in my eyes I still couldn’t see a thing.Morning, noon and night drops.‘Oh, you have a slight infection,’ they said.More drops.I told them I can’t judge dark from light, I fall over.‘Only to be expected.’ they said. They didn’t tell me that.The operation was January 10 and since then I have seen eight specialists.Some have said the lenses they inserted are problematic.They now tell me if they re-move the lenses I could be completely blind.

The Queen, she goes in, wears dark glasses for one day and it’s over. But not me. Lawyers are looking into it.I have become very fearful of them doing anything.I was in the garden and I thought, ‘There are an awful lot of bugs in this drink.’ I go inside, empty it out, fill the glass and they are still there, then I realise they are everywhere.It’s in my eyes.Little black dots everywhere.Then they told me it meant the retina was coming away.Another specialist said that apparently my right retina came away during the procedure but they pushed it back.

“I actually had the Queen’s surgeon look at me and he is the one that pointed out the possibility of blindness.It’s something about the lenses being stuck into the eye.Another surgeon said there is the possibility of placing a black lens in the eye and I said, ‘I would look very weird,’ and he said it would help my ability to judge day from night.

“You’d be amazed how many places have white walls and white tables.There is a new drug that costs $900 a month to help with that. I took it and it had absolutely no effect whatsoever.I deal with it by using a big magnifying glass and using very large print, like a children’s book.I have to have somebody to take me around the airport and into the plane.And all these meetings in these studios, they all have huge white tables. And I am sitting there thinking, they don’t know I can’t see them at all.”

Once again, we laugh almost hysterically as we both know it’s quite tragic. Is there no hope?

“There is hope that they would do one eye at a time to remove the lens.If the first eye goes blind then they won’t do the other one.I also have nightmare pain in the neck from a disc.”

She has had several procedures where steroids have been injected into the disc and she still can’t turn her neck properly when it flares up which is probably exacerbated by stress.

What makes her power through it?

“I don’t know.I have had five operations under anaesthesia where they shoot steroids into the dodgy disc and then they say we missed it.”

She is also on pain killers.

We order croissants, no jam because she’s a spiller, and wearing white. She’s like all the strong female boss characters she’s created and then some. I wonder, does she laugh a lot and make jokes to make you like her? She’s certainly very easy to talk to, kind. The eyes, the neck, the ITV. They’re all scary but she seems to have taken them in her stride. Perhaps she’s prolific because of the setbacks. It’s her way of working through the pain.

The first tidal wave of pain came when she was divorcing Richard La Plante in 1996. “When you go through amarital exposure… for me it was a betrayal of everything.The worst was my trusted PA.I kept saying to my lawyer, ‘I don’t understand how he knows everything I am earning.Every contract.’She was feeding him everything.They got married.”

How very All About Eve. No wonder trusting people is new to her.

She nods. “He had Raymond Tooth as his lawyer, an obnoxious little man (known for his ferocity in the court and nicknamed Jaws) and I had a man with a stammer!I was told to stay quiet and not say anything.

“Eventually I said, ‘How much do you want? Put it on the table.’ And I sold everything I had to get rid of him.But I wouldn’t let him have so much as a brick of my house. When it was over, the relief was immense.

“Richard was coming after me for the house in the Hampton’s and alimony for the rest of his life.I sold everything that I possessed so that he didn’t get a brick.But I didn’t have to give him his name back, that’s the only thing I got out of it.My name before was Marchal. It’s not a good name.What’s the best gift I have ever had?My divorce papers.I waited so long so I was glad for it to be over and to be free.And to be able to have my son.

“He wouldn’t let me adopt, I had had three miscarriages and he said no to adopting.It was over for me.I thought I have got to be very grown up and just accept it was over for me and babies.I got a great Dane.

“I remember the moment – I had gone to the States. Was at afriend’s house by the beach. The water came up almost into his yard and I saw this girl walking towards me and she had a two-year old on her hip.His little legs were moving and I remember thinking I will never have that.Whereas before I thought it’s too late, I’m too old, I thought I had accepted it but suddenly I felt such emotion. I thought that I had dealt with it but I hadn’t. When I got home there was a phone call from an attorney – when I had been hoping to adopt I had been listed with many attorneys, this one said, ‘we’ve got something for you, there is a baby being born in Florida, we don’t know if it’s male or female, the birth mother does not want any finances, she does not want to know or meet any adopters, she has not queried if it’s a single parent.Somehow you have risen to the top of the list. If you can be in Boca Raton by tomorrow morning, the baby is yours.’ So I left immediately from the Hampton’s to Boca Raton and the next morning I had my son.”

How interesting – the moment she gave up and let it all go, she got the call.She answers simply with the stream tears from her eyes,

“Perhaps other people would have queried it, saying I am bymyself now but I didn’t.When we were married he said, ‘We are not adopting.’ I didn’t have to turn anyone down, this was the first.I know my son (Lorcan now 15) finds it hard at school as he is always referred to as Lynda LaPlante’s adopted son.He hates that, he says, ‘I am your son.Why do they always say adopted?’

I promise her I will not use the phrase LLP’s adopted son.

“He says, ‘I am your son,’ and he is extraordinary. She can’t hide her pride in him. Does she fear that the birth mother will come looking for him?

“I hope that one day I will reunite her with him.At his Christening – I went to town, it was huge.I talked to the Archbishop who was doing the ceremony, I asked, ‘Can you please insert a prayer for the birth mother to be at peace with this?’ He said, ‘I have never had to do this before.’ And I said that I would appreciate it.And there wasn’t a person at the ceremony who didn’t feel it.

“I owe her 15 years of love from this extraordinary, naughty boy who is now in the Hamptons with his motorbike.He can’t go on the road, just on the grounds. He is gorgeous looking and very funny.He is very handsome, brown haired.He said, ‘Will I have a suit at the premiere?’ I said yes, and he said, ‘Not a Marks and Spencer’s one?’ He is quite a snazzy dresser.He is broad, he does rowing (I’ve seen them together and they look like they belong).

Since he was three he has had a girlfriend called Hailey, they met at summer camp and they have been together ever since. She looks like a young Kate Moss.They are a divine couple, beautiful together.She bosses him around.”

I’m sure Lorcan is a large part of her drive. Her east coast banker boyfriend has been gone about a year. “I got quite tired of when he came to London, get tickets for this, book Harry’s bar… I am not his secretary.He is very, very, social, Mr. Society, has all these huge parties.We had an enormous argument about a painting.I don’t know if you ever saw that play Art, where one of them has bought a white canvas.He bought a white canvas by… I said I don’t care who it’s by, you actually bought a white canvas.I cannot believe you would do that.So, I drew a little face on it and he went berserk.

“My house in The Hamptons is full of American Indian art.He would walk in and say, ‘Oh my God, the red Indians.Why have you got them in every room?’

She sent out for painkillers which have just arrived. She slips one down. Of course, never having complained

She has a library of her own intellectual property. In the library are outlines for a further 5 Tennyson books, outlines for Above Suspicion. I wonder why all these outlines laid out? She’s up at 5am every day – never stops. Is it because she thinks at 75, she might not have time to write all these books?

“No,” she says. She takes it in her stride. These days she can’t really see where she’s going, but she’s going there anyway. Any pain, any problems seem to disappear when she talks about her son. And when she talks about the kindness of Steve McQueen which seems to have totally compensated for the pain caused by ITV’s dismissive attitude.

“Steve gave it back to me.He constantly refers to the way we work together.He is generous to me.He sent me the most amazing flowers saying, ‘Thank you for your amazing notes.’ She smiles blissfully.

She worries that she might have to let go of things she cares about like her house in the Hampton’s, her 1970’s Mercedes.

“I can’t drive it now, butI hate letting go of things.I keep things because they make me remember exactly what I was doing when I got them. I keep doing bits of letting go.”

Is it because she’s testing how it feels to let go of the small things to see if she’s ready to let go of bigger things?

“I don’t think so,” she smiles, enjoying the ride even if she’s no longer driving the car.